John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

I was talking with the mobile health lead at one of the large telcom providers recently and we had a good discussion about telemedicine and its possible impact for good or bad on healthcare. She asked a really good question, “Will telemedicine lower the cost of healthcare or just add new touch points?”

The translation to that question is whether telemedicine will replace other healthcare costs or if it will just create new healthcare costs that never existed before. I should say that her feeling was that telemedicine would end up lowering costs, but the question is well worth asking. In fact, even if the answer is that telemedicine will lower healthcare costs, there are many on the payer side of the equation that aren’t as confident.

The reality is that a telemedicine visit likely could raise costs. The idea of having to uproot yourself, go to the doctors office, wait in the waiting room, wait in the exam room, etc is a really big deterrent that stops many of us from going to the doctors. The idea that I could click on a link and see a doctor from the comfort of my own home with no wait times (or at least I’m waiting at home where I can get other things done) will definitely cause us to see the doctor more often.

This means that the real question isn’t whether telemedicine will increase the number of visits to the doctor (and more visits equals more costs). Let’s assume that we do see the doctor more often in a telemedicine enabled world. This then begs the question of whether these extra visits will reduce the long term costs of healthcare.

Using our assumptions above, it suggests that we’ll visit the doctor earlier under telemedicine than we would today. Could these early visits catch a disease earlier? Could these early visits avoid a hospitalization or other expensive healthcare cost? Could early treatment of an issue prevent someone from having a visit (or dozens of visits) later? Looking at it from a different angle, can telemedicine make a doctor more efficient?

This impact won’t likely happen immediately, but is the long term hope of what telemedicine can become and how it could lower healthcare costs. I personally lean towards telemedicine being able to realize these goals. Although, we won’t know until we figure out the way to reimburse a doctor for a telemedicine visit. Not to mention overcoming the physician licensing issues with telemedicine. Each of those will happen though and then we’ll really know if telemedicine lowers the costs of healthcare or not.

One of the early adopters of telemed are self-insured employers. They factor into their costs less time away from work (productivity costs) and the convenience factor (higher satisfaction). The other key early adopters are value-based care plans. Both of these entity’s are motivated to lower costs while maintaining quality. It’s a pretty good indicator that telemedicine is here to stay that when all costs are factored in, is not only a lower cost option, but a preferred option for quality (better health) and convenience as well.

Telemedicine is here defined as a substitute for face to face visits. There is another perspective on telemedicine. Telemedicine makes self management possible in cardio vascular diseases. It is proven that self management leads to better medical outcomes then usual care for instance in the area of blood pressure monitoring and thrombosis care. Better medical outcomes are here defined as a reduction of risk of heart diseases and strokes. If we take this long term effects into account, the question of lower costs of telemedicine might be answered positively.

Having developed and studied a mobile-to-mobile (M2M) telehealth model, I honorable submit that is is my experience that it will lower global costs.

We’ve found that once an encounter can be conducted and documented in less than 5 minutes, it will engage primary care providers…ergo, the ability to bring stable chronic disease care (75% of the health dollar) online. Further, telehealth within the medical home can be leveraged by health systems to reduce uncompensated ED misuse, as well as, reduce hospital readmissions from early online f/u after discharge.

The 30-month study that we conducted with the University of Kentucky found a 15% lower per-capita cost of care and a 19% increase in clinic productivity. In effect, it will help drive the ACO movement toward a value-driven, shared risk model (capitated); and, in this payment system, telehealth…especially mobile platforms for the provider and patient, will become a necessity.

Good read covering important question demanding value of innovation it is easy to
See value in convenience and saved dollars from transportation and lost productivity, real savings come only when early intervention prevents disease or treats disease early to prevent complication and finally if early intervention of complication preserves limb or life.

We developed InstaMD digital stethoscope for affordable Tele healthcare enabling intelligent ability to examine patient heart and lung sounds besides a glorified video conferencing. It is currently being crow funded .

We hope thus type of smart telehealth certainly is capable of reducing readmissions for heart failure heart attack and pneumonia patients by early intelligence based intervention

My colleagues and I share the optimism, clinical experience and hope of commentators above.

At the same time, I have concern as a resident of the state of Florida, which has the dubious distinction of being the medical fraud capital of the United States. That may be the concern that makes insurers less than enthusiastic supporters of telemedicine.